British Bulldog is a tag-based playground and sporting game, commonly played in schoolyards and on athletic fields in the UK, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and related Commonwealth countries, as well as in the U.S. and Ireland. The object of the game is for one player to attempt to intercept other players who are obliged to run from one designated area to another. British Bulldog is characterised by its physicality (i.e. the captor inevitably has to use force to stop a player from crossingIona Archibald Opie, Peter Opie: British Bulldog. In: Children's Games in Street and Playground. At the Clarendon Press, Oxford 1969, p. 22.) and is often regarded as violent, leading it to be banned from many schools due to injuries to the participants.Caroline Sanderson. "British Bulldog". In: Kiss Chase and Conkers: The Games We Played. Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd., Edinburgh 2008, , pp. 15–16.
The game is a descendant of traditional chasing games recorded from the 18th and 19th centuries, which partially evolved into collision-sport-related games during the early 20th century by the inclusion of lifting and drifting tackling techniques. In a sport's historical context, like its predecessors, British Bulldog has been used as a skill-and-drill device to reinforce and further develop locomotion skills fundamentally vital to American football, rugby, association football, hockey and related team sports.Sharon Baker, Jane Watkinson: "Games Using Tag Concepts". In: Jane Watkinson: Let's Play! Promoting Active Playgrounds. Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois, 2009, , p. 92.Tim Lynch: Quality invasion games. Red Rover or British Bulldog? In: Active + Healthy Magazine. Volume 20, Issue 3/4, Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation, Adelaide 2013, p. 27.
Name and regular use
While the game of British Bulldog is a conglomerate of different sources and pre-existing rules, the origin of the name is not entirely clear. In his book The Nation's Favourite, Guardian author Mathew Clayton (Free University of Glastonbury) clarified that, unlike other games, British Bulldog did not emerge until the 1930s.Mathew Clayton: The Nation's Favourite... The UK's Best-loved Things. Quercus, London 2010, , p. 133. According to Cambridge District Scouts the game has been practiced under that name since then at several British Scout meetings.Cambridge District Scout Archive: British Bulldog. Scout Games, 2019.
Around that time, the game is mentioned in various newspapers, e. g. in February 1933 in The Kingston Whig-Standard, Ontario, Canada,The Kingston Whig-Standard, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 3 February 1933, p. 2. and in April 1934 in the Londonderry Sentinel, Derry, Northern Ireland.Londonderry Sentinel: Boy Scouts. 3.000 for Albert Hall., Derry, Northern Ireland, 3 April 1934, p. 7.
One of these early sources dates back to 1 March 1934. In an article from the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, it is described how Cub Scouts managed to lift a player off the ground as they shouted "British Bulldog!" In the Buckinghamshire Examiner from 15 June 1934, British Bulldog has been called "the most popular of all games" among the Scouts. Sources appear throughout England, always in connection with the Boy Scout movement, especially from the area of Great Yarmouth (Norfolk).
After spreading northward, British Bulldog has been recorded in Roxburghshire and Stirlingshire, Scotland, several years later. Falkirk Herald stated that the game "was successfully tried out in the dark" by the Scouts, which soon became a variation of the game ("British Bulldog in the dark").
In December 1942, Burnley Express in Lancashire reported a modified form of the game, incorporating rules of rugby football. More details appeared in 1949, when the rule of lifting a person was gradually displaced in favour of football tackling.
Although the game has already been known in the United States under different names, and possibly originated there from earlier decades, the name 'British Bulldog' was adopted by the Boy Scouts of America, likely during the turmoil of World War II. At the time, the national emblem of British Bulldog not only represented the economic and political strength of the British Empire but has also been applied to Winston Churchill, characterizing a person of sheer will and fortitude and a staunch antagonist against the Nazi regime.
Apart from that, extensive game descriptions in connection with the name 'British Bulldog' did not appear in scientific treatises and periodical literature until the 1940s (e.g. in January 1941 in a dissertation by athlete Winston Alexander McCatty in the Canadian journal The School, Secondary Edition, published by the Ontario College of Education, University of Toronto, and in June 1944 in Boys' Life magazine in an article by William "Bill" Hillcourt, Boy Scouts of America).
In the U.S., the game spread slowly. While Scout troops in Tulsa, Oklahoma or Bluffton, Ohio were still playing their own school ground game of 'Black Man', Boy Scouts in Paterson, New Jersey had been practicing British Bulldog since the second half of the 1940s.The Morning Call, Paterson, New Jersey, 24 December 1948, p. 13. The Daily Republican newspaper (Monongahela, Pennsylvania), published on 13 May 1949, proclaims that "a new game entitled British Bulldog was introduced to the Scouts".
Basic description Most commonly one or two players – though this number may be higher in large spaces – are selected to be the "bulldogs". The bulldogs stand in the middle of the playing field. All remaining players stand at one end of the area (home). The aim of the game is to run from one end of the playing field to the other, without being caught by the bulldogs. When the players are caught, they become bulldogs themselves. The last player is the winner and starts the next game as bulldog.
Location The playing area is flexible—it can be played on a street, a playground, between cloisters, in a large sports hall or on an area of a playing field—though there is no set size of the pitch nor set number of players as long as there is enough space for the participants. The selected location consists of one main playing area, with two 'home' areas on opposing sides (similar to the try-zone areas used in rugby or American football). The home areas are usually marked by a line or some other marker.
Rounds Each game of British Bulldog consists of a sequence of rounds, and it is usual to play a number of games one after another with different players as bulldogs each time. The game is initiated with a single player (or sometimes two) chosen as bulldog, standing between the home areas. The rush (also known as 'open gates' or 'stampede') is started by the bulldog shouting the phrase "British Bulldog!". The other players run across the field simultaneously, and once they left their home area the bulldog(s) must attempt to catch them. The players caught become bulldogs as well. The round is then repeated in the opposite direction until all players have become bulldogs.
In the later stages of the game the bulldogs will outnumber the remaining players, which can make captures especially rough as many bulldogs attempt to capture individual players.
Capture
Commonly, a player is caught by either being lifted off the ground by the bulldog or being tackled and held stationary, while the bulldog exclaims a phrase (e.g. "British Bulldog!" or "British Bulldog; one, two, three!"). If the runner can escape before the phrase is complete, or if they are able to continue moving (if being held stationary is required), then they are not considered to be caught.
Since the early 20th century, capture by tackling or lifting was a well-known feature of chasing and "running across" games such as Black Man and Pom-Pom-Pull-Away, although tackling has become more common than lifting. The tackle variant is sometimes referred to as 'Take-down Bulldog'.
One of the predecessors of 'Take-down Bulldog' was described in 1935 by Elmer Dayton Mitchell and Bernard Sterling Mason in the widely received publication Active Games and Contests under the name 'Tackling Pom-Pom-Pull-Away'. The book is primarily concerned with tag, running and combat games and provides further instructions of exercises solely connected to sports such as soccer and rugby football, basketball, baseball, and hockey. In this context, 'Take-down Bulldog' can be considered a football version of traditional chasing games.
Alternatively, the runners also become bulldogs if they cross a boundary equivalent to a touch-line. It can be a valid method of capture for a bulldog to force a runner over the boundary.
If the runners successfully enter the opposing home area without being captured, they are considered 'safe'. The bulldog(s) may usually catch any number of players in a single rush, all of whom become bulldogs.
Winning The aim of the game for the bulldogs is to catch all the players as quickly as possible, whilst the aim for the other players is to stay uncaught for as long as possible. The last player to be caught is usually considered the winner.
Traditional predecessors (18th and 19th centuries)
British Bulldog is a descendant of a range of games from the 18th and 19th centuries, which were widespread in Western and Central Europe (UK and Germany in particular) and later – in the course of emigration – in North America and Australia.
In contrast to British Bulldog, many of these ancient games were strongly connected to mythical and superstitious subjects.
Before British Bulldog became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, Black Man, Black Tom, Pom-Pom-Pull-Away, Chinese Wall, and Crows and Cranes were the favorite schoolyard and sporting games. Those games also used to be part of the physical education programs for boy scouts, football players and in public schools across the United States.The American Schoolmaster. Volume 6, Michigan State Normal College, Michigan 1913, p. 395.Elmer Dayton Mitchell, Wilbur Pardon Bowen: The Theory of Organized Play. Its Nature and Significance. A. S. Barnes and Company Inc., New York 1923, p. 207/241.Elliott West, Ray Allen Billington: Growing Up with the Country. Childhood on the Far Western Frontier. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1989, , pp. 108–111. Some of the games, especially Black Man and Pom-Pom-Pull-Away, had been systematically enhanced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the inclusion of tackling and lifting techniques and thus became progenitors of British Bulldog.
Black Man
Black Man (Der schwarze Mann), sometimes called Bogey Man,William Albin Stecher: The Bogey Man (The Black Man). In: Handbook of Graded Lessons in Physical Training and Games for Primary and Grammar Grades. John Joseph McVey, Philadelphia 1907, p. 63. is a traditional German game and one of the oldest games in the line of Western European chasing games. It was described in 1796 by Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths.Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths: Der schwarze Mann. In: Spiele zur Uebung und Erholung des Körpers und Geistes, für die Jugend, ihre Erzieher und alle Freunde unschuldiger Jugendfreuden. Im Verlage der Buchhandlung der Erziehungsanstalt zu Schnepfenthal, Schnepfenthal 1796, pp. 259–261. It draws on ancient "plague games" in which the catcher epitomizes the Black Death.Johannes Nohl, Charles Humphrey Clarke: Who Is Afraid of the Black Man? In: The Black Death. A Chronicle of the Plague. Harper & Brothers Publisher, New York and London 1926, p. 259.